fire

Since the 1950s, Christian Jaccard uses different techniques and combinatorial processes. The fire-tool “draws” as well as any brush. The living paint spreads inside the canvas, generating forms whose distribution are never completely predictable. It is not the fire which is important but the after trace, the charred imprint, the memory of the making.

My visit to Jaccard's studio on January 2, 1991 will forever remain in my memory, seared by a trace of fire. (...) When I understood that soot is to ash what void is to blue, I realized that I had never experienced such an emotional shock before the sublime truth of appearance since the 14th of January 1961, at the site of Yves Klein's fire sculpture in Krefeld.